


Letters Unsent

by xxSparksxx



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 03:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15110543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: Five letters written but never sent by Ross and by Demelza during his first term in Parliament.





	Letters Unsent

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for 4.03, but only very mild.
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely mmmuse.

_i._

My dearest Demelza,

London is loud and unspeakably busy. I’ve been here before, but never for more than passing through, and I find it makes a difference, to know I am committed to being here for a period of months. I will grow used to it, I’m sure, but for now I find myself awake at all hours of the night, and thinking fondly of the slower pace of life at home.

I think fondly of you, but there is so much else. I miss you and sometimes wish you were here with me, but so often the missing you is crowded out by other feelings, which I am ashamed to admit to you. When I lie awake at night I think of you and sometimes I become so angry with you. I never hate you, but the anger is like a living thing. I want to rage at you. How dare you? How _could_ you? How could you discard all we had? I don’t say you did it easily, but you did it. You risked our lives, our marriage, for a handsome face and a bit of flattery. I have worked for you, supported you, loved you, and you forgot that. And for what? You said, that night after the election, that what you felt for Hugh could never compare to our love, but whatever you felt was enough to betray me for.

When I think of him having you, I choke on anger. His hands on you, his mouth. Did you let him do that? Did he have you, the way only I have ever had you? I don’t know. I cannot ask you because I fear the answer. I found a poem he wrote you and it seemed to me that you’d let him have you, but how can I tell? How can I ever know? The uncertainty eats away at me.

And how can I ever win you back from a dead man? I am not a poet, Demelza. I am not given to soft words and romantic gestures. I have never been that man, and I had thought that you were satisfied to take me as I am. Now I feel I shall never measure up. Who can compete with a ghost?

I can never have back what you have given away. I don’t know how to forgive you for that. I don’t know how to let this anger go. It’s best that we’re apart at present. It’s best for both of us. This anger will wear itself out in time, and in time you’ll cease to grieve for Hugh. Perhaps we can try to rebuild something of our lives. There are the children, after all. 

I will never send this letter. I rage against you, but that doesn’t stop the love. I love you, Demelza, as I never have and never will love anyone else. But this time apart is necessary, I think. You must grieve for Hugh, and I must find a way to live with the knowledge of what you have done.

Your husband,  
Ross

_ii._

My dearest Ross,

It is already a hard winter. Jeremy has a cold and Clowance is beginning it too. They are an unhappy pair. I don’t let them out with a cold and they do not like it. I make games and read books and teach Jeremy his letters but they want to be outside running around. They will soon mend but everything feels a long time when you are a child.

Everything feels a long time to me now too. I have been used to you being gone for some nights or even some weeks at a time, but I have never liked it and I don’t like it now. The bed is cold and lonely without you. I want to hear your footstep all the time, and your laugh, and see your face and hold it in my hands. The thought of months more of missing you and managing without you makes me feel lonesome, even though I have the children and Prudie, and my brothers are often here and take good care of me. None of them are _you_.

Even when your letters come, it is not the same. They come so seldom and say so little about your thoughts and feelings. You tell me about Westminster and the people you are working with but nothing of yourself. How do you spend your time, Ross? Do you go to plays and spectacles, when you are not in the House? Have you found like-minded people to meet and talk with? Do you think of me as much as I think of you?

Oh Ross, when at the last election I said that you should have agreed to be nominated as an MP, I did not realise the truth of it. I did not think of how long we should be parted for and how hard the parting would be. When I saw how much George was away I began to see, but it’s only now with you gone that I understand it fully. I sometimes feel I will burst from the ache of missing you. Especially just now, when my heart is aching so already. 

I think I will never send this letter. I think would be too hurtful for us both. So I may say in this letter something that I can never say to you nor to anyone, and that is that though I do grieve for Hugh and for the waste of his death, there is a part of me that is glad of it. Not that he is dead, but that he is gone from our lives. I never looked for anyone else, and after I realised how he had touched my heart, I wished he had not. I have never looked for love from any except you, Ross. I shall never _ever_ love anyone as I love you. But Hugh was in my heart and I wish he had never been there. I wish it because it hurts you, and your hurts are my hurts. Even now when we are so far apart.

I shall burn this letter. But I cannot end it in any way except to say I am, always,

Your loving wife,  
Demelza

_iii._

My dearest Demelza,

I saw Geoffrey Charles again today. He is so altered from the boy we knew. He was rather a spoilt thing, but his father’s death – and perhaps his mother’s remarriage – has altered him as much as his time at school. He is very much a young man now, worldly and fond of society. Much like Francis was at his age. A little too fond of his alcohol, perhaps, but he handles it well. Better than Francis did, when we were boys together. He is like his father, but I think only in the best sense. Whenever we meet, he asks after Drake. He is a loyal friend, despite George’s best efforts. I pass on what little I know from your letters. I think he would write to Drake directly, but is unsure whether it would be appreciated. What do you think?

I took him to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. It’s popular, and has much to entertain a young man (for, despite his relative youth, that is what Geoffrey Charles has become). There are attractions for all sorts of appetites, and I myself

Demelza, I brought two prostitutes back to my rooms tonight. They were both handsome women. High-class harlots, not the kind of women one occasionally sees in Truro. They dressed and acted as ladies. I brought them to my rooms and poured wine and then they offered me what I had brought them there for.

I thought I would do it. I thought I _could_ do it. You’ve broken my faith in our marriage and I thought that, since the thing is broken, why should I not? They were good-looking. I was lonely. It would be meaningless in some ways, and in other it would be an act of spite, of jealousy. A way to make myself feel better after months of imagining you with Hugh. But I couldn’t. In the end I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even let them kiss me. How could I? When despite my anger and jealousy, I still love you? Still think of you as the dearest companion of my heart, the only woman with whom I want to share my life? 

And now the anger rises again. I choke on my own jealousy and bitterness. And after all, perhaps you would say that you have only done to me what I have done to you before. An act of betrayal. A single act? You told me that it felt like I left you, even though I had stayed, and I didn’t understand you entirely then, but now I think I do. The act is bad enough, but then there is the heart, is there not? 

Yet my heart was never truly entangled. I should have seen it sooner, found it another way, but I came through it knowing that you are the woman I love and that there is no happiness without you. But your heart, my love? Your heart has been touched by another, and it seems to me there will always be a corner of your heart that will never belong to me, when before I had it all.

Another letter I cannot send, for I cannot willingly inflict pain on you by sharing my follies. But perhaps it has done me some good to write it.

Your husband,  
Ross

_iv._

My dearest Ross,

It is Christmas night, and I am weary from the long day, but I thought I would sit and write at once, before I forget, all of the things that have happened today. It is your first Christmas away and I think you will like to hear about it all.

We cooked a goose for today’s dinner. You mind I asked you about it, and you said I should. I know you say you trust me to make such decisions but I feel better asking you about it. Then there are no misunderstandings. Prudie made syllabubs as a treat for pudding, and Sam and Drake came to join us. It was merry enough, though the children were somewhat sore with missing you. It’s their first Christmas without their father. Jeremy is old enough to understand that you are doing important work, but Clowance is too young yet. She fretted most of the afternoon, though Drake tried to distract her.

We opened the presents you sent us after breakfast, before we went to church. I know you don’t like church, but it was Christmas, and Sam was pleased we went, so I am glad we did. Jeremy is most pleased with his toy soldiers, and Clowance her doll. It is a fine thing and I shall have to teach Garrick to leave it be, or the china head will be smashed in no time, and then there would be tears. It was thoughtful of you to send me some new music. Perhaps I shall have learned it by the time you come back, though I am so busy now that I scarce have time to play. There is always something needing doing.

But honest, Ross, the only present I want is your return. You said in your last letter you might be able to come home for Christmas and I wish you’d not said so. You raised my hopes and now I feel empty. Just empty. I work and walk around and do all the things I need to do but inside I am aching from missing you. And I am aching from the distance in your letters. You still don’t write about _you_ , Ross, and I wonder if this is my fault or if it is just your way of writing. We never exchanged letters before so I’ve nothing to compare. You write almost as if I am a stranger.  
Have I lost your trust so much that you can no longer tell me what you think or feel? I lost your trust once before and it hurt, but now it is like a pain lodged in my breast stopping me from breathing.

Will it ever be as it once was? I cannot bridge this distance alone, Ross. Come back to me. Please come back to me. Forgive my mistakes if you can, but even if you cannot, come back to me. I could bear your anger better than this horrible, cold distance.

I have wept all over this letter. I can barely read the words for wet marks. I shall burn it. 

Your loving wife,  
Demelza

_v._

My dearest Demelza,

I put pen to paper this evening knowing I will never send this letter. I am not in good enough spirits to write a letter that you might read, but impulse drives me to write. Perhaps my last unsent letter purged some poison from me and I hope this will do the same. I hardly know. 

I am boarding a coach tomorrow that will take me to Cornwall. I am coming home. It has been some six months since I saw you and I have no idea how I will feel when I see you again. I do not know if my anger is still a living thing that may rise up in your presence. I do not know if I will be able to kiss you and hold you without being jealous of a dead man who may or may not have kissed you and held you. I _do not know_. I long to hold you in my arms and yet I dread it, too, because what if we have changed too much? 

I have changed, Demelza. I am still who I was, but I know that I am different in other ways. I have learned how to walk among the powerful in Westminster, and so far I have done it without making compromises that would destroy me. It may not always be so, but thus far I have kept my soul intact. 

And you? Have you changed? Have you missed me as much as I have missed you? You rarely speak of missing me. Perhaps it is too painful for you, as it is for me. Perhaps I am merely deluding myself. Your grief over Hugh was deep, I know, and even you, with your joyous nature, will not have healed entirely yet. Have I spent all these months missing you while you have pined for Hugh? I don’t know if it is anger and resentment and jealousy that makes me think so, but I do think it. You write about the farm and the mine and the children but it is as if there is a part of you that is closed off from me.

I do not know if you can ever be wholly mine again. If he were alive, I would call him out and fight him for what he has done to us, but he is dead. He is gone. I cannot fight him. So how can I ever truly know if you are mine because he is dead, or because you love me more? I don’t know if I can ever ask you these questions, nor explain how I feel. In a few days time I will see you again. I will be able to touch you, to hold you, to feel your heart beat under my hand. I don’t know how it will be. I don’t know how we will be together. I love you. I desire you. I want no other in my life. But I can’t trust that you are mine. 

I must find a way to trust you, and to trust myself. Maybe it’s a thing we can only do together. But I don’t regret our parting, Demelza. Perhaps that’s the hardest thing of all to realise. I have missed you, but I think if we had stayed together, my anger might have directed itself towards you, or worse, grown into resentment. And I could not bear that. I would never willingly hurt you, Demelza, though I know I have unwittingly done so before.

I remain, always, your loving husband,  
Ross


End file.
